The dollar hasn’t budged from its top spot for the past three decades, withstanding repeated efforts to unseat it. Almost 90 percent of the $5.3 trillion a day in foreign-exchange transactions last year involved the dollar, the same share as in 1989, data from the Bank for International Settlements show. More than 80 percent of trade finance was done in dollars in 2013, according to Swift, a global financial-messaging network.

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A week after the BNP Paribas plea, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin urged European governments to promote the euro more in international transactions. While he said he wasn’t fighting “dollar imperialism,” his comments echoed those of predecessor Valery Giscard D’Estaing, who coined the term “exorbitant privilege” in 1965, referring to the benefits the U.S. received for the dollar’s status.

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“The Fed is the central bank of the world,” said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Corp.’s U.S. Trust, which oversees about $380 billion. “The rest of the world benefits from the dollar standard as well.”

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“The U.S. dollar remains dominant in traditional trade finance, and we don’t see a replacement any time soon,” said Astrid Thorsen, the head of business-intelligence solutions at Swift in Brussels. “The yuan is gaining traction, and it has dethroned the euro from second place. But the competition has been between currencies other than the dollar.”

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Companies, consumers and central banks around the world prefer the dollar to other currencies, including the euro and yen, because they trust the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government to back it, according to Marc Chandler, the chief currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

“There are always people who say the dollar is going to be replaced, but it hasn’t happened,” said Chandler, who’s based in New York. “The biggest threat to the dollar’s dominance is the U.S. deciding to abdicate one day, not others complaining about it for this reason or that.”

But not everyone is so exuberant...

“The dollar’s role will decline gradually and modestly over time, but it will still remain as the dominant currency,” said Bergsten, founder of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and a former Treasury Department official. “The euro has already claimed a central role, and the yuan keeps getting more important. Neither will likely replace the dollar, though.”